Sunday, July 22, 2007

Another Satan Emerges

The Great Satan (Al-Shaytan Al-Akbar) now has company. No not just the Jews. Nor even the godless Russians. Nor the Indians. Make way for the Chinese. The News reports that the "attack on Chinese nationals in Balochistan is said to be the first reaction to Chinese government’s steps to curb Muslim insurgency in its own territory." This follows on recent attacks by Islamic radicals on Chinese in Islamabad. What's it all about? The Online Times describes the ongoing war between China and Islam on its Western boundaries.

The Chinese executioners came for Ismail Semed before 9am. They led him out of his cell as the sun climbed over the Tien Shan mountains in the land he called East Turkestan. ... The end seems to have been quick. A group of prisoners were executed at the jail that morning, February 8, Chinese officials confirmed, and economy was the order of the day. ... Buhejer [his wife] described it to a reporter who called from Washington on behalf of Radio Free Asia, about the only source of regular news on this forbidding place. “I saw only one bullet hole,” she said, “in his heart.”

The dead man was one of 9m Uighur Muslims in China’s far west, a Turkic people whose quest for national identity is one of history’s lost causes. The dying embers of their struggle flamed into protests, shootings and bombings in the 1990s, all concealed from the world until September 11, 2001, when China discovered the usefulness of the “war on terror”.

I guess it's Bush's fault. But however that may be, China is waging a battle of cultural extermination against its Muslim minorities with a genuine ruthlessness, before the word became debased by the accusations of CAIR.

“I was in the People’s Armed Police when the rebellion broke out in ’97,” said a burly Chinese driver, who proceeded to give a vivid and satisfied account of this barely known massacre.

“For a while we lost control,” he said. “The insurgents got into an armoury, killed our men and seized the weapons. There was chaos. We brought in the army - they changed into police uniforms - and then we got even. The central government ordered us to crush them without any hesitation. Believe me, we did.

“We lost a few people but we killed - I don’t know exactly - thousands of them. These people know our strength. We taught them a good hard lesson.” Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman and politician now in exile, says she saw a horrific police video of the “good hard lesson” when she went to Yining in 1997 to investigate. It showed unarmed adolescent boys and girls shot dead on camera, their bodies tossed into trucks. A mother and her group of children, aged five or six, crumpled under a volley of bullets. The taped slaughter went on and on, with excited commands and shouts of glee from the Chinese on the soundtrack. Perhaps one of them was the driver.

One of the most fascinating questions -- one worthy of a book -- must be why Osama Bin Laden chose to order his suicide airplanes into Manhattan rather than say, Beijing or Moscow. Both these nations have been campaigning against Muslims for centuries. And the answer, I suspect, lies in the "excited commands and shouts of glee form the Chinese on the soundtrack". Or the veritable rain of shells that fell on Grozny in the recent past or the vicious campaign that still rages through Chechnya today. Maybe Bin Laden attacked America because he knew how it would fight. In a mode where even prisoners in Guantanamo Bay could insist upon their Korans being handled with white gloves, while a large section of America's own media would condemn this treatment as too harsh.

Attack Beijing or Moscow? Any Chinese or Russian response to a Bin Laden attack would have gone as unreported as the Chinese reprisals of 1997 -- the year incidentally that Hongkong was returned to its motherland -- no need to raise any jitters about that. War by al-Qaeda against China or Russia would have been just kinetic war. One in which radical Islam would lose 100 men, women and children for every Chinese or Russian it killed. That was a losing proposition. What Osama needed was information war, one which would allow him to dish out propaganda instead of take losses, and that could only be started by attacking the United States of America. Western politics would do the rest. Only after the information war started was it feasible to extend the military campaign. Strange as it may seem September 11 was a necessary prelude to attacking the Chinese.

There are times when I am tempted to think that the Western Left is radical Islam's Ring of Power. And the brilliance of al-Qaeda's reliance on it as a force-multiplier is that the defeat of radical Islam must consequently come at the price of altering the structure of post-war Western politics itself. In a sense the Western Left has become a hostage to the current world crisis, and perhaps the only part of the Left that understands this are the signatories of the Euston Manifesto, who realized that al-Qaeda had already claimed its political soul: that unconciously, almost imperceptibly, the Left in uncritical embrace of any foe of America had come to align itself with the most brutal, obscurantist, repressive theocrats on the planet. And would conceivably share its fate with them.

But al-Qaeda's allies can only control events up to a point. Elemental forces are ranged against it. Chief among which is the sheer, simple brutality of countries like Putin's Russia and China. If a snapping point is reached, even the Left may not forever restrain the West. The end point of debasing the coin of information is absolute bankruptcy.

34 Comments:

I've been told that these sort of confrontations have been going on for a while and that the Chinese usually try to keep this stuff hush hush. They do have a pretty large Muslim population though they don't have the PC laws in place that prevent them from cracking down on law breakers.

(a) The US is now successfully following the approach Israel has developed and implemented in recent years, i.e. identifying and going after the leaders of opposing terrorist groups,

and

(b) An unintended consequence of the left's 'lawfare' campaigns to protect terrorists from consequences once captured may have been that when US troops acquire their targets they now kill them on the spot rather than take prisoners.

From the Al Qaeda leadership's point of view the enthusiastic but indiscriminate retaliation engaged in by China and Russia (which probably manages to hit them only rarely) may have come to seem relatively attractive.

The reflexive anti-americanism has people cheering on China, who hopefully rises and knocks the USA down a few notches.

There was an interesting instance recently about a Canadian citizen detained by the chinese authorities, being accused of involvement in the islamic uprising in Xinjiang.

The reaction from the center-left in Canada to Harper making an issue of this was amazing, and enlightening. He was severely criticized by almost everyone from journalists, ex-government officials (he was new in government), Liberal (capital L, as Liberal Party of Canada) politicians, the ex-prime minister, and on and on. How dare he put in jeopardy the trade and economic growth of China.

I may be wrong about anti-americanism as the root. I think it may be as simple as trying to plug their ears so they don't know about it. The US has the temerity to confront the issue, which unfortunately makes people notice. If those damn Americans would only shut up and stay home, then we could focus on important things like what type of wine should go with the cheese.

The idea of Russia and China are not a threat to the Islamist or to the far left. The idea of America is.

So 9/11 was meant to force Muslims to choose sides: You're either with the US or the terrorists. AQ counted on the rest of the world "elite" to lean their way, which it would but for the undisciplined blood lust of the terrorist--who will cut off even the heads of the hands that feed them.

hdgreene - The idea of Russia and China are not a threat to the Islamist or to the far left. The idea of America is.

Not true. For decades, despite our pandering to Zionism, the Muslims lead by KSA were great allies because they feared the idea of godless, communist Russia or China greatly.A reason they went after the US was not just because they thought we were a paper tiger legally constrained from wiping them out by Liberals...but because they thought communism and godless totalitariansim was dead. It was not, as the godless Chinese minions under Party leadership creaming the US and other competitors has shown.

So 9/11 was meant to force Muslims to choose sides: You're either with the US or the terrorists. AQ counted on the rest of the world "elite" to lean their way.

No, 9/11 was meant to topple the autocratic perverted regimes that were suppressing Islam from restoring the Caliphate under pure, uncorrupted Good 'ol Islam of the 7th Century kind. Part of it was intended on getting the US out, the Zionists gone fom their squatter's colony, and an end to the purient cultural filth pouring in from Hollywood Jews. But those were side issues to the restoration of a continuous Caliphate from Andalusia to East Timor, with obstacles like China and Russia in the way of that as much as America. Then of course, the Islamists dreamed of conquest of new territory like depopulating Europe, along Africa's bloody borders, and insurgencies in lands like Thailand, Turkey, Philippines.

Along the way, other than the strong support of the anti-West Jewish-Gentile Left that support them and seeks laws to make their prosecution nearly impossible - they have shown a genius for lining up more and more enemies.

China is a big fat new bad one if they keep it up. Like Japan, China is noted for all it's history for suppressing insurrection and rebellion without mercy. The Mongols liked that strategy, too. When the Muslims surrendered Baghdad to them then began the usual Muslim bushwacking insurgency, the natural Mongol response was to kill everyone they could in Baghdad.

I'm sure the phrase "nits grow into lice" was 1st said by a Chinese warrior..

If the Islamoids try it with the Chinese, they best stand ready for a nation that will respond with no ACLU, no bleeding hearts NGOs moderating their payback.

Spot the American - evidence is provided that China is fighting Jihadi, that Russia is fighting jihadi, that Philipines & Thai & India have all been fighting jihadi. That jihadi captured a cinema in Moscow and threatened to kill everyone or that they sent gun men into the Indian Parliament. The big question on the American mind is: "why Osama Bin Laden chose to order his suicide airplanes into Manhattan rather than say, Beijing or Moscow"?

When the military is one of the most respected institutions and media one the least, what is going to happen when everyone realizes that we lose wars because of the media?

There is nothing unwinnable about the war with Al Qeada. It's small beans. What's scary is the war within the West. Ripping down institutions is what the Left does. Historically, all it does is pave the way for something else.

My own favorite theory of why Radical Islam attacked America on 9/11 -- and it is purely my own wild blue yonder speculation -- is that subconciously Bin Laden wanted America to save it. And I think, though I may be wrong in this, that many Muslims secretly thought the same way.

What disappointed many Iraqis shortly after Saddam fell was that the Americans, despite their technological wizardry and money didn't have a magic wand that would make everything right. Instead they came with this horrifying message. "The dictator is gone; you're on your own. You're free." You couldn't have chosen a message more designed to disillusion.

What many expected and wanted was Paradise in exchange for Submission. The trouble with all the Saddams, Nassers and Abu Nidals was that they couldn't provide the Paradise part. They could demand submission through their secret police alright, but those who wanted Paradise would have to await it from Allah. That left two alternatives: to invoke Allah's Paradise by pleasing him with a torrent of blood, hence the Jihad; or get the richest country in the world to conquer them and wave its infidel, but potent magic wand over the barreness. Allah or the Jinn but the Jinn did not grant three wishes.

I think the Muslim world knows it has a problem. It is aware its civilization is in crisis. But it has lost the confidence to resolve it by itself. That despair is why every solution that Middle Eastern radicals -- and its Western Leftist enablers -- have to offer is extremist and bizarre. It always has the tinge of the apocalyptic and the impractical.

How shall Palestine be saved, for example? By the destruction of Israel. In the meantime they can all wait around, skip school, let the roads go to pot, shoot their doctors in the legs, attack UN teachers, burn their green houses, expel their scientists, kidnap their friends. Trash their surroundings and pervert and degrade themselves. But on the Day of Reckoning, all those blemishes will be smoothed out. The trash will collect itself because on the day Israel falls, there will be dancing in the streets, food will appear on tables, cell phones and gadgets will pour in from the somewhere that non Muslims make them. Think of the ending to Star Wars after the Death Star has been destroyed, except the party goes on forever after the credits.

But that kind of magic is forbidden to humans by God. Or Reality, the Creator or History if you prefer. Humans are cursed with freedom. Man's daily bread and deliverance from evil comes is his responsibility. Has been, since he was driven from the Garden.

They expected magic from America and got the offer of freedom. And yet I think the Muslims may luck out because America has nothing else to give them. And may find it within themselves yet, for the nature of this gift is that it cannot truly be given, through the process of working out their problems in the face of attacks from al-Qaeda and the discouragement of the entire Sophisticated Western World Ideology. What's striking about many of the "sophisticated" recommendations for Iraq is that they recommend anything but freedom. Sophisticates would give the Middle colonialism, theocracy or even totalitarianism first. Even return Saddam if it were possible. Cut a deal with every dictator in the region and divide up the carcass of Iraq among the strongmen. But work with them to learn freedom, never.

Cedarford, a curiosity, what's your religion, if any? I wonder from where all that jew-hating comes from. I'm not jewish, but I'm mostly pro-Israel. Actually, I don't see any reason for being anti-Israel, unless you're one of those delusional folks who think that once Israel is destroyed and/or the "Palestinian" state is established the islamic world will live in peace and everybody will hold hands and sing. Whatever.

Wretchard -- good points on Freedom and it points also to the eternal struggle for freedom vs. tyranny among mankind, for some very un-political reasons.

When man was nothing but hunter-gatherers, societies were flat. Violent and brutal, yes, but also flat and fairly free. If you didn't like what the group did you could head out with a few of your friends on your own. Vagaries of nomadic hunting meant you had to depend on your fellows to help feed you, even the best hunter can come up empty.

From the transition to agriculture and nomadic herding onwards, mankind has struggled with the desire for freedom, where everyman benefits, to that of hierarchy and some form of tyranny, where the big man can hold all the women and wealth.

Why should it shock you that the Left prefers the Big Man, in whatever tyrannical form? Or that Muslims prefer also the Big Man? This is a proven way to have many women, and wealth, for the privileged and connected few. The Left and Islam both want polygamy for the few, enforced celibacy for the many, and the wealth put to only the connected and powerful.

If Freedom is just another word for each man can live his own life, neither the Left nor the Muslim world want any part of that.

There is another side to this story. While it's true that China's treatment of Uighurs in Sinkiang (as well as Tibetans in Tibet) has been at times bestial beyond belief--and has been largely hushed up by its Neo-Stalinist govt--it's important to remember that 100 years ago Muslim armies led by local warlords terrorized half of western china. Repression of Buddhists, destruction of Buddhist temples and relics (and even assaults on the tiny number of Jews and their synagogues), as well as forcible conversions, linger on in the memories of the local Han Chinese. There's nothing new under the sun, and the Taliban didn't spring whole out of nowhere.

Uighurs (pronounced "Wiggers") are a charming and attractive rural people who despite their Turkic language and religion share some degree of Indo-European heritage with peoples such as the Afghans. They certainly deserve protection and self-determination. But the radical Islam that many view as the means to achieve this is as medieval and cruel as Al Qaeda's, and the Chinese are right to resist it--though their continued support for the sponsors of terror in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan has come back to haunt them in the form of this 'blow-back'.

Wretchard, To have freedom requires vigilance, that you defend your freedom.

The USA destroyed the Iraqi army and ripped apart the Iraqi civil service. The Iraqi army that was (by the standards of the region) quite strong has been transformed into one with seriously outdated tanks, no fixed wing airpower and no strategic weapons (SCUDs etc.). Iraq is reliant upon the USA to defend itself against better equipped neighbours.

The USA arbitarily decides that Iran, Syria and Saudi go unpunished for their attacks on Iraqi civillians.

To quote the great Axel Rose: "Can't trust freedom when it is not in your hands..."

There's another version of that tale we heard from the north of Bagdad about Al Queda barbarity. This time the storycomes from the south of Bagdad:

Al-Qaeda informants comprise largely members of the Doura network who found themselves either working with the group after the US-led invasion in March 2003, or signed up to earn extra cash because there were no other jobs going. Disgusted at the attacks and intimidation techniques used on friends, neighbours and even relatives, they are now increasingly looking for a way out, US officers say.

“It is only after al-Qaeda has become truly barbaric and done things like, to teach lessons to people, cut their face off with piano wire in front of their family and then murdered everybody except one child who told the tale afterwards . . . that people realise how much of a mess they are in,” Lieutenant James Danly, 31, who works on military intelligence in Doura, said.

Nomenklatura, re: "The US is now successfully following the approach Israel has developed and implemented in recent years, i.e. identifying and going after the leaders of opposing terrorist groups,"

Not a satisfactory approach, though far better than the appeasement course the Olmert government is now bent on following. The long-term solution lies in mass expulsion of all the Muslims, from all non-Muslim countries, including Israel.

To close the circle - China depends on the US for its prosperity. Also, China has never been willing to project its undoubted power beyond its traditional boundaries. Remember the shock of the Belgrade Embassy bombing. Its Great Wall keeps itself in as well as others out. So China is tickled pink to see the US attack its Muslims' friends in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are laughing up their sleeves at our squeamishness and sensitivity to "world opinion". They know if you attack Muslims, you must kill them all. They secretly hope they get Taiwan out of the deal, especially if they can get another Clinton in there.

"Uighurs (pronounced "Wiggers") are a charming and attractive rural people who despite their Turkic language and religion share some degree of Indo-European heritage with peoples such as the Afghans. They certainly deserve protection and self-determination."

These charming, attractive people are the same ones who stole the now nation of Turkey from the Greeks and whine about the Christian crusades. For some time they have attempted a repeat performance with China. They deserve only what they are getting.

"If the Islamoids try it with the Chinese, they best stand ready for a nation that will respond with no ACLU, no bleeding hearts NGOs moderating their payback." And no Western govts. protesting.

I guess most of the West don't care whether the Muslim innocents were killed. They believe, innocent or not, eventually the Muslims will turn against the West. E.g. 2nd and 3rd generations French Muslims stage their nightly car-ba-cue; UK doctors turned homicidal... They just flip without warnings. For the West, the less of them, the better for the rest of us.

The top Democrats agree that we must leave significant numbers of US troops in Iraq, not only for selfish reasons, but because we Americans are so altruistic. We want to prevent chaos and bring order and stabilization to that country -- as if US troops were not already creating chaos and instability there every day. But among the foreign policy elite, the US is always a force for order, "helping" naturally chaotic foreigners achieve "stability." For the elite, it's axiomatic that the global "stability" that keeps us secure and prosperous is also a boon for the people we "stabilize." For this to happen in Iraq, time must be bought with partial "withdrawal" plans. (It matters little how many foreigners we kill in the process, as long as US casualties are reduced enough to appease public opinion at home.) This is not open to question; most of the time, it's not something that even crosses anyone's mind to question.

I.e., the Demz are just slightly more hypocritical American Econo-cultural-military imperialists.This is what passes for University "Foreign Relations" academic analysis these days.

The UK Times hints about China helping Pak's special forces and hitting a terrorist training camp, and making alliances with local countries along the old "silk road" who are oil rich.

We need to find someone with knowledge of this area to dig up and analyze what's going on. There's a lot of stuff in the WOT going on in Asia that is ignored by the MSM...but sometimes gets in the UK media.

What I found interesting was the Saudi money trail...I'd love to see the NYTimes write an expose on how Saudi charities are trying to destablize the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand and China.

wretchard you wrote, "Maybe Bin Laden attacked America because he knew how it would fight. In a mode where even prisoners in Guantanamo Bay could insist upon their Korans being handled with white gloves, while a large section of America's own media would condemn this treatment as too harsh.

Why do you leave out that after 9/11 the U.S. bombed two countries, destroyed the infrastructure of Iraq, jails thousands of people without justification, uses depleted uraniuim and chemical weapons that resulted in deformed babies and contaminated land?

I was giving the Arab reasons why they attacked us from their 1996 and 1998 Fatwas. Prominent in them were the matters of why the Arabs wish Jihad on the Jews and their products.

Not giving my own reasons why Muslims should do Jihad against the West - because personally, I'm not a Jihadi kinda guy.

Yes, of course the Islamoids are now "dangerous for the future" squatters in the West, much as the Jews were in Muslim minds before they physically cut the Ummah in half and all but assured perpetual war..

There are, though, higher level issues than Israel or Hollywood's purience driving the Jihad. It is primarily about restoring the Caliphate that joined all Muslims in religion and secular matters for almost 1200 years and which has been gone less than 100 with the dissolution of the Ottomans and the various Sultanates being replaced by nation states. The radical Muslims claim that even in the face of the natural order of things, the Caliphate can return.

That is the dream that motivates young Muslims to die. They have a solid, time-tested ideology that sustained others on identical Jihad many dozens of other times.

That is the problem.

They want to Reform the Ummah.They want to Rid the Ummah of harmful foreign influence and purient culture.They see both matters as urgent to reverse the decay of Muslim influence and way of life globally.

Israel is a smaller matter, but Muslims, including moderates, see it as intolerable in the long term. It is a small country with 1/200th the number of Muslims in the Ummah, and it cuts the Ummah in two at it's heart - which is orders of magnitude worse than losing a fringe territory on the periphery of the Ummah.